Towards a speech-gesture profile of discourse markers: The case of ‘I mean’

Chen, Yaoyao; Adolphs, Svenja; Knight, Dawn

Abstract

Our study aims to develop a new corpus pragmatic approach for exploring the gesture patterns (i.e. functions and forms) co-occurring with the discourse marker ‘I mean’, including a comparison with previous research on another discourse marker (i.e. ‘you know’). We selected and analysed 246 instances of ‘I mean’ and 88 gestures that co-occur with these instances from the supervisory sub-corpus of the Nottingham Multimodal Corpus (654 mins, 118,508 words). A functional framework for the analysis of speech functions was developed based on the emerging speech patterns surrounding ‘I mean’. This included three functions: ‘editing’, ‘introducing modifications’ and ‘ending modifications’. The co-occurring gestures were categorised into four functional types: pragmatic, referential, beat and deictic gestures. The main results of the speech analysis of ‘I mean’ suggest that ‘I mean’ tends to be used predominantly as a marker of ‘editing’ (163 instances, 66.26%) and ‘introducing modifications’ (80 instances, 32.52%), both of which emphasise the speaker's intention to present additional information. These findings largely resemble those of ‘you know’; however, the functions of ‘you know’ are more varied. The analysis of the gesture patterns co-occurring with ‘I mean’ shows that both the ‘editing’ and ‘introducing modifications’ functions tend to co-occur with pragmatic gestures that serve a similar function of presenting and offering information (e.g., open hand palm up and open hand palm oblique gestures), mirroring the results of ‘you know’. These results suggest a functional coordination between discourse markers and gestures.

Citation

Chen, Y., Adolphs, S., & Knight, D. (2024). Towards a speech-gesture profile of discourse markers: The case of ‘I mean’. Lingua, 312, Article 103836. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103836

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 14, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Nov 20, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024-12
• Deposit Date: Dec 10, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 10, 2024
• Journal: Lingua
• Print ISSN: 0024-3841
• Electronic ISSN: 1872-6135
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 312
• Article Number: 103836
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103836
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/42833514
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384124001670
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: Towards a speech-gesture profile of discourse markers: The case of ‘I mean’; Journal Title: Lingua; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2024.103836; Content Type: article; Copyright: © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.